As Stephen Dowling put it in his BBC News article a few years ago, “when it comes to crossing the road, there's no such thing as an international standard. Every country does it differently.” How people drive and cross the road, according to Dowling, is a matter of a country’s cultural values. Is it really?

End of the week –and a fresh serving of interesting links from economist bloggers and blogging economists. 1.  Joe Weisenthal from the Business Insider tells us how Ben Bernanke murdered the gold standard – and good riddance too! 2.  Nice infographics from Turbotax on the history of taxes in the US. 3.  Econbrowser discusses the prospects of the Eurozone crisis. 4.  Michael Sandel talks about market thinking from an unusual point of view. Quite illuminating, in a way. 5.  The Free Exchange blog explains (or tries to explain) several of America’s macro puzzles. As usual, excellent read. 6.  Noahpinion talks about an interesting model of asset bubbles. 7.  A very nice piece on heterogeneity from the Minneapolis Fed. 8.  Some stabs in the back of libertarianism from Noahpinion again. Couldn’t agree more, really. 9.  Witty counterfactual from our old friend, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative. 10. And from him again, something useful for those who like myself teach macro – problems with teaching SRAS shocks